Now someone has humorously pointed out that in its promotional zealousness, Apple appears to have unintentionally encouraged massive violation of and made a mockery of its own End User License Agreement (EULA) for Safari. EULAs are supposed to set clear legal guidelines for terms of use and help consumers know what they can and cannot do (i.e. you cannot install this software on everyone in your neighborhood's computers). Apple's EULA states that Safari can be installed on "a single Apple-labeled computer at a time", forbidding non-Apple-marked hardware Windows machines, and the updater itself states that "Use of this software is subject to the original Software License Agreement(s) that accompanied the software being updated."

So apparently Apple has succeeded in massively violating its own EULA, a possible first of this scale, depending on the number of accidental or intentional Safari downloads. Lawyers point out that concerned citizens need not fear about legal action from Apple. Jonathan Kramer, a tech attorney who runs Kramer Telecom Law Firm states, "We call this an impossibility issue, you can't enforce a term that's impossible."

Amidst this embarassing debacle, new reports are coming in that Safari is faring rather poorly on Windows XP, with many users experiencing crashes. Windows XP users who felt smug about Windows Vista bugs, may find an unexpected new source of problems-- Apple. Apple's support forum is being flooded by angry posters complaining that their XP version of the Safari browser is broken. Says SakJosep, one such poster, "When I try to start Safari 3.1 in Windows XP, it crashes right away."

OllieK92 echoes the previous posters sentiments, stating, "I have this problem too, I have no idea what it is."

Some users are reporting that the browser simply will not open. The thread on the problems has received over 1,000 views well before receiving much media coverage, making it clear that the problem may be afflicting many users. There have also been scattered reports of Safari not running on Vista, though XP has received many more such reports. Of the Vista problems, most posters said the previous versions worked properly, but that the update to the current version, 3.1 broke the browser.

Ironically, the new version of Safari-- 3.1-- had mostly received glowing reviews. Many reviewers lauded its better speed, security, search tools, and improved support of HTML standards. However all is not sunny in Cupertino as it appears that Apple may be in for some more criticism amid poorly though out attempts to leverage its iTunes user base as a means of pushing the browser, and from some pesky bugs that have cropped up.

"Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment -- same piece of hardware -- paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be." -- Steve Ballmer